PU hosted first 'Lecture Series of Bio-Club'

Chandigarh, November 8, 2014: Panjab University (PU), Chandigarh today hosted the first ‘Lecture Series of Bio-Club’ under the aegis of Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster (CRIKC).

The first academic meet of CRIKC was attended by more than 200 young research scholars

and scientists of various institutes situated in and around Chandigarh. PU Vice Chancellor Arun Kumar Grover, Director NIPER Dr. K.K. Bhutani, Director, IMTECH Dr. Girish Sahni and many senior academicians participated in the panel discussion and discussed on ways to improve Bio-Research activities and interdisciplinary research in Chandigarh Region.

PU Vice Chancellor (VC) Arun Kumar Grover introduced the theme and highlighted the importance of collaborative research in science. Chandigarh Region has a great potential to become a hub of innovative research as it hosts leading institutions of higher education like PU, IISER, IIT-Ropar, PEC University; Government funded research institutes like IMTECH, NIPER, NABI, BPU, INST, TBRL etc. and medical research centers like PGI and GMCH, he added.

Director, IMTECH Dr. Girish Sahni appreciated the top level research bring carried out in PU and passionately called for increased interactions among-st scientists and young researchers, which would lead to meaningful research having societal impact. He also suggested various ways to promote mutual support and collaboration.

Director NIPER Dr. K.K. Bhutani emphasized the need for sharing library facilities including access to online journals of the institutes by all the researchers of the region. He also floated the idea of uploading scientific lectures on the CRIKC website for the benefit of students.

Former NABI Director Dr. Rakesh Tuli deliberated on the complex nature of biology, and suggested that multi-disciplinary, multi-centric collaborative projects are the need ofthe hour, and they should be strived for under CRIKC umbrella.

Prof. Somdatta Sinha from IISER, Mohali, urged the scientific community to shun individualistic approach and go in for inter-disciplinary collaborative research mode as is the scenario in the developed countries.

Earlier, Dr. Javed Agrewala from IMTECH delivered a scientific talk and shared his scientific inputs in the development of a novel TB vaccine, which is far more effective than the currently used BCG vaccine. Prof. Prince Sharma from PU, Chandigarh talked about the versatility of microbes especially extremophiles for their industrial applications. He informed the audience about the enzyme technology that he has transferred to an international company, New England Biolabs.

The highlight of this meet was plenary session in which students actively involved themselves and put forward their desire to have more Meets of this kind. They wanted better access to library and instrumentation facility of other institutes falling under CRIKC. All the participants expressed the need for having an active CRIKC website listing the scientific expertise as well as the instrumentation facilities of each of the CRIKC institutes.

A need for the creation of a dedicated portal catering to the queries of young minds was also put forward. PU VC Prof Grover assured to look into all these aspects. The meeting was convened by Prof. Prince Sharma of PU.

CRIKC Coordinator Prof Rupinder Tewari gave introduction about the Bio-Club. The research scholars also gave poster presentation on the occasion.

Dr. Girish Sahni, Director, IMTECH volunteered to hold the next meeting of Bio-Club at IMTECH, Chandigarh.

(SK Vyas/Jalandhar)

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